Tikkipala (43 page)

The manager, his face so wreathed with smiling that Devi thought his lips must hurt, said, ‘We have worked all week, my wife and children, to make this room perfect for your honoured self, but if there is anything else we can do or give you, we will work non-stop and night and day and without sleeping to provide it,' while the wife and the daughters squeezed among the multitude of chairs, tables, whatnots and wardrobes that looked as though they had been made from cardboard, straightening a flower here, picking up a petal there, wiping away a spot of dust with a sari end.

‘Thank you,' said Devi, trying to usher them out.

‘Memsahib must say what she wants to eat for every meal,' said the wife. ‘For I will do all the cooking myself as long as she is here and so please tell what are your favourite foods. And does Sahib like hot? And does Memsahib eat banana flower? And here we have some very good lotus root. Shall I make a lunch of it tomorrow?'

‘Thank you. We like that very much,' said Devi who had never eaten such things before.

‘And tell Memsahib about the chingli maach,' urged the wife to her husband. And without waiting for him, to Devi, ‘We have the biggest and the best prawns in all of India here.'

They seemed just about to go when one of the daughters thought of another thing.

‘Would you like some night time milk? We can bring you heated glassfuls at this very moment.'

‘Not now, we are rather tired,' Devi tried again, hopefully and looking significantly at the door.

‘Of course. Memsahib is tired. Myself and family must unpack her luggage for her,' cried the manager, eagerly taking hold of Devi's case. ‘Please Memsahib and Sahib, you may sit down there and I and my family will do this service for you.'

‘We will do it,' said Devi, starting to feel frantic. She thought she might even have to struggle physically to keep possession of her luggage. ‘Thank you so much, but we like to do our own.'

The family, instead of taking the hint, kept finding more and more things to do and made ever more offers of assistance.

In the end Devi had to tell them, quite brutally, ‘Please go now, for my husband and I want to be alone.'

‘I am sorry. I am sorry,' the manager and his family started saying and it took ten more minutes for them to fully express their apologies. At last they were out but even after the door clicked shut, Devi could hear the sounds of breathing creaking as though the whole family were on the other side, listening.

‘They probably planned to stay in here all night,' she told Nirmal. She waited but he said nothing. He was looking out of the window with his back to her.

‘I'll unpack,' she said. She felt tired. Perhaps that's what pregnancy does to you, she thought, as she opened the suitcase. Cockroaches scrambled out of the drawer when she put the clothes in. At last the things were put away and she straightened. ‘You are very quiet,' she said. ‘You haven't said a thing since we've been in here.'

He was standing staring at the bed.

‘Isn't it gorgeous,' sighed Devi and picking up a handful of the perfumed petals, let them fall out of her fingers like snow.

‘There's only one bed. How shall we manage?' said Nirmal.

Devi felt her face go red, but said, ‘We are married, Nirmal. Did you forget?'

He frowned. ‘I didn't forget that, but I just thought…'

‘What?'

He shrugged. ‘It's all a bit awkward, isn't it.'

The manager looked miserable and puzzled when Devi went to reception and said there was a problem with the bed.

‘Do you wish more blankets? Are the flowers not to your satisfaction?' He was already scuttling around, ready for any orders she might give.

‘The bed looks wonderful,' Devi said. ‘It is just that we need two.'

‘There is nothing to be done,' Devi told Nirmal when she got back. She felt pleased and triumphant. She had done her best, after all. She had tried. ‘We will have to sleep in this.' She told herself yet again, a week is a long time and a week of nights together should be long enough for anything.

After ages, during which Nirmal kept fiddling uselessly with his things, Devi slowly began to unwind her wedding sari. As she reached the petticoat, she started
worrying that her stomach was already a little swollen with Maw's child. Hastily she turned her back to Nirmal and surreptitiously slipped into the splendid transparent night gown that her father had had stitched for her by the Bidwar darzi, slithering into it as carefully as if she had been in the presence of a strange man and not her new husband.

She slipped into the bed, trying to do it surreptitiously, but it was impossible, for each of her movements produced a shower of petals and a mighty creaking. All the time Nirmal did not move. She wondered if he planned to stand all night by the dressing table, turning his brush this way, his comb the other.

He got into the bed at last and lay looking up at the ceiling.

Devi looked up too. A single gheko waited, frozen there, anticipating mosquitoes.

‘Uhm, would you like to feel it?' she asked Nirmal after a while. The gheko did a little twitch as though the sound of her voice had irritated it. Because Nirmal did not answer, the echo of Devi's question seemed to ring round and round the room.

‘Feel what?' he said at last. His tone was grumpy as though he was sulking about something.

‘Come on. Put your hand there,' She grabbed his fist and pulled it onto her stomach. ‘By now it's only the size of a lychee but it's already got arms and legs.'

Nirmal kept his fist clenched for a while and would not open it. ‘Why do you think I am interested in another fellow's brat?' he said.

‘Nirmal, I forbid you to be bitter,' commanded Devi. ‘You are an artist. You make sculptures and here is a work of art creating itself inside my body. Surely that is just the sort of thing you are interested in.'

Nirmal uncurled his hand and clapped it cautiously over Devi's stomach. He kept it there for a long time. After a while, his hand still there, he said, ‘I can't feel anything.'

‘Oh, well, try again tomorrow. Keep trying. After a while it will begin to kick and then you will definitely feel something.'

He put his hand back, and smiled. ‘I think I felt it.'

‘Maw told me that when his people get married, the husband fills his mouth with milk and honey and then slowly puts it into the bride's mouth with his lips.'

‘How extraordinary,' Nirmal was impressed.

‘Shall we try it?'

‘But we don't have either milk or honey,' Nirmal said.

‘You could fill your mouth with water.'

Nirmal shuddered. ‘Water? I haven't put the stuff in my mouth since I was twelve. I wouldn't mind doing it with gin and bitters, though.'

‘That wouldn't be good for the baby,' said Devi.

‘Not even very weak gin? Lots of bitters and very little gin?'

At their call, the manager came up with a noggin of gin and a bottle of angostura bitters. He looked disapproving.

It took ages for the very weak gin and bitters to pass from Nirmal's mouth into Devi's. The drink was quite warm by the time it came to Devi's tongue.

Next morning at breakfast, the manager's wife brought them aloo, chaat, paarata, and her own special chutney and then stood by them, celebrating every mouthful, till Devi felt as though she was three again and being looked after by her ayah. They were half way through their first parata when the hotel manager came to say, in a disapproving tone, ‘The god-maker is outside, waiting to speak with Mr Nirmal.'

‘Please tell the god- maker that my husband is on his honeymoon and is not available today,' said Devi. ‘He will try to see the god-maker tomorrow if he can fit it in.'

‘Rubbish,' cried Nirmal. ‘I can't wait till tomorrow. I have been looking forward to this all week.' His breakfast half eaten, already he was dashing for the door.

‘Nirmal, Nirmal, wait for me,' cried Devi, but he was gone without hearing her.

She found them in the bazaar, a pathetic row of mud and straw huts, toppling on crooked stilts over a stinking drain. They were clapping mud onto a new wicker female frame, while round them pye dogs, black pigs and half naked children sloshed in the foetid water.

‘This is my wife,' Nirmal told the god-maker. ‘And also she is good with statues. And will help us with this Durga.'

‘I am sorry, Madam Nirmal,' the godmaker said. ‘But this cannot be. In our village, you see, the female is not permitted to touch the sacred goddess, except under certain circumstances.'

‘What circumstances?' asked Nirmal.

‘After the menopause,' suggested the god-maker, then looked doubtfully at Devi.

‘Don't be so ridiculous,' cried Devi.

‘Also in pregnancy a woman is permitted.'

‘Ah, in that case I qualify,' Devi cried and plunged her arms into the bucket of liquid mud that had been stirred and was ready for smearing.

‘But, Sir, but, Madam, last night was your first wedding night, so how is this possible?' The god-maker tried to put his body between that of Devi and the image to prevent any further sacrilege while Devi tried dodging round him with mud slopping hands.

‘Madam, my wife is with child. I can confirm that,' said Nirmal serenely.

‘Are you sure, Sir?' said the god-maker. ‘For this is most unusual in such a short space of time. The god-maker was much impressed. ‘Sir, you must be a most fertile gentleman to get the good results so quickly. And please Madam, feel free to wipe the goddess with your respected hands.'

Back home a week later, the honeymoon nearly over, the Raja began making arrangements for welcoming his daughter and new son-in-law. Rangoli designs had been painted on the threshold and garlands strung over the great front door. Nirmal might be a messy drunk but he was Devi's husband, and as such required a proper welcome.

‘I have prepared a set of apartments for you and Nirmal,' the Raja told Devi when they arrived. ‘You can have all the privacy you want. It would be lovely to have you here for meals, but you and Nirmal might feel like eating alone together.' He led the newly wedded couple through the palace, to where his carpenters and painters had been working all week. ‘Everything you need is here,' he told them. He leant towards Devi and whispered conspiratorially, ‘And I have single beds put for the pair of you. I felt that is what you would like, considering the nature of the marriage.'

At regular intervals during the following six months Nirmal would feel Devi's belly, becoming increasingly amazed and excited as the child grew.

‘This is nearly as satisfying as making a mud statue,' he said.

When Devi felt sick, or suffered from some other pregnancy symptom, Nirmal would tell her sternly, ‘Everyone has to suffer to create. My hands have often been bleeding by the time I finished a statue.'

The baby bulge began to stick out. ‘It's kicking, I can feel it bumping against your skin,' Nirmal shouted. Because his hands were rough from making statues, and she said it hurt her skin, he started feeling the baby with his foot instead.

‘Your feet are scratchy too,' she complained. ‘Try with your lips.'

His lips against her stomach tickled and made her laugh.

When the baby stuck out so much that Devi had to waddle, Nirmal put his ear against the now gigantic and tight stretched belly and he heard a sound inside.

‘I know it is a girl,' said Devi. ‘Everything about it makes me sure.'

‘Of course it's a boy,' said Nirmal. ‘How can a girl have such enormous feet?' The feet in question were punching his ear at that very moment.

Devi's baby was a boy. Devi was surprised. Khan's wife had said you could tell whether it was a boy or a girl by the way it moved in the womb. But as this was the only child she had so far born, she had nothing to compare it with.

‘He is very big for one so premature,' the aunts said suspiciously after having chucked Baby under the chin and made all kinds of kissing popping noises with their lips.

‘Modern children are getting bigger all the time,' the Raja said swiftly. ‘The human race is putting on extra inches every generation.'

The aunts looked doubtful.

Queenie examined the baby closely, then looked at Devi. ‘He is very dark. One can hardly believe he is Nirmal's child.'

‘Amazing, isn't it,' laughed Devi.

Queenie patted her on the shoulder. ‘Anyway, don't you worry about it, my dear. Baby skins turn fairer as they grow older and the skin stretches.'

Nirmal could not stop looking at the new born child. ‘He is not at all what I expected,' he told Devi.

‘That's because you expected a ten foot high mud goddess,' retorted Devi.

Devi could not decide what to call him.

‘You will have to think of something soon,' Nirmal said. ‘Or ‘Baby' will stick, and he will be called that even when he's grown up.'

The palace household had settled down and these days the presence of Devi's baby was taken for granted by everyone. The Raja was filled with a daily sense of relief that after all he had not entirely lost his daughter. Anoo, who had not expected to have any grandchildren, was delighted with Baby and began to become a bore at the club, starting every sentence with, ‘You will never guess what my grandson did today.' Or ‘My grandson is only one and already can say ten words.' This was in fact a bit of an exaggeration. Baby, it is true, made ten separate sounds of which three were comprehensible. ‘I am thinking of putting him down for Harvard because he is so advanced for his age.' It reached such a pitch that other club members began to smile behind their hands and suspect that Anoo was going senile.

At first Devi was reluctant to let Maw see the baby. She did not know what his reaction would be but she felt reassured, when, soon after the child's birth, she came into the nursery and found Maw bent over the cot. When he straightened, he was smiling as though the child made him feel happy. As though Baby had two fathers, Maw and Nirmal began competing with each other for a chance to play with the child. When Baby cried, Maw would soothe him with strange whistling sounds. And, as he grew older, Nirmal would swing him through the air or take him for rides round the nursery on his back.